An aspirant contesting for the position of the Speaker of the House of Representatives has allegedly offered members of the All Progressives Congress (APC) National Working Committee (NWC) financial inducement to influence zoning in his favour.
OsunDaily News understands that some major aspirants for the position of the Speaker of the House have adopted lobbying with money and other resources to gain favour from members of the NWC.
It was gathered from Daily Trust that a source from the APC secretariat revealed that a particular aspirant for the position has offered some members of the NWC as much as $10,000 for favourable zoning.
The source said the aspirant wants zoning for the Speaker of the House to go to the North, while that of the Senate President be zoned to the South for him to have an advantage.
It was learnt that the instances of lobbying are responsible for the delay in zoning the principal position for the incoming 10th National Assembly.
However, reacting to the development, some members of the APC NWC who spoke to Daily Trust have denied the claims saying people can not be stopped from speculating.
They however admitted that the party leadership, including the NWC, is engaging the aspirants as part of the move to have a seamless National Assembly leadership election.
One of the members who spoke on condition of anonymity said, “You cannot stop people from making speculative assumptions on issues like this. It is all part of politics. Everyone has his way of playing political games.
“However, I am telling you that I am not aware of anybody being bribed, but the party will make its position known.”
Another member of the APC NWC, Chidi Duru, who also denied knowledge of any financial inducement said while the speculations on what is happening cannot be the true reflections of things, the party is not resting on its oars to get it right
“In a nutshell, what I am saying to you is that if there’s any inducement as to financial or anything at all; then the person must be going out of the ambit of the directive given by the president-elect and the party itself,” he added.
